Residents of the western UK and Irish coasts have been warned to expect an invasion by a vast flotilla of ghostly, immortal albino plastic ducks, according to reports.
The tale of the floating, whitened bird-simulacra migration is a strange one, dating back many years. It seems that the plastic bathtime companions were …

True Value

Ducking the issue

You are of course ducking the real issue in that because of freezing the ducktile nature of the plastic has now been degraded. If you had conduckted proper research you would also have found that these ducks are highly prized by bus, train and orchestra conducktors as lucky charms – much like a rabbit’s foot. In addition, after being melted down, they are also finding their way into heating systems to replace standard metal duckting……..

interesting bit.......

Register you never cease to amaze me with your random stories!!! I find it amazing that a "rubber ducky" would sell for $1000 dollars. Only you would find that story and expose the potential for money hungry riots on the beaches. Thank you for your diligence in reporting news worthy of a Sesame Street news cast.

Brilliant

Re Enola Gay

> Imagine it is 1982 and you are in a band, a synthesiser pop band...

"A Flotilla of Ghostly Plastic Bathtoys" would have been a much better name that the original one that the authors of "Enola Gay" came up with. They were first known, I believe, as "Hitlerz Underpants"

Mind you, a flotilla of Ghostly Hitlerz underpants? now that would be a sight to see!

Cornwall ? Noooo...

I'm sure this invasion is something those Cornish "freedom fighters" the CNLA (aka, the "Oooh-Arr-Aaay") will not put up with. It doesn't look good, does it, if they allow all these incomers to simply wash up on their beaches, un-challenged ? Next thing you know, they'll be drinking their cider, riding their tractors and romancing their women. And we all know where that type of activity will end...

I advise the CNLA to appropriate a job lot of canes with little hooks on (possibly from a travelling circus, just before they set fire to it for "coming roun' 'ere, entertaining our children" etc) and wade out to take the invasion head-on !

wordy

Fantastic!

What a great story, beautifully told but no doubt told with a thesaurus close at hand. I wonder what significance it might bear in the world of IT? Still, it is positively engaging to hear of these plastic heroes voyaging their way around the world's oceans. I wonder if any have turned up in shark's stomachs.

Radio 4 covered this

Oceanographers realy appreciate those ducks, shoes, etc.

They've provided some welcome and important data about ocean currents, with implication for both pollution (and nutrient) transport and even global warming. (Of course, anything gets a link to that these days!)

http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/ducks.html is an old article (1994), there must be newer ones around.

Anatidaen is not a word

Family names end in -idae. To refer to a species as a member of a family, you drop the -ae, for example humans belong to the family Hominidae, and so are referred to as hominids. You should have said "plastic anatids", not "plastic anatidaens".

I loved this story!

I don't know why, and I am not being sarcastic. It's got nothing to do with IT ( GPS Duck Tracking?), as far as I can see, but it's just so beautiful to think of little yellow/white duckies going around the world's oceans, bobbing from coast to coast..

Somehow, it reminds me of that movie, Fly Away Home; the one about the geese. Yes, I know these ducks aren't alive, but still.

And just to add the kicker, all those chaps who sneer at Chinese manufacturing, here's the single largest rebuttal to your sneers..A loud QUACK!! Multiplied by 10,000.. And I am not Chinese!

Thanks for a story that was totally over the top, Lewis. It makes me want to work for El Reg.

Shoe Tree Vancouver Island B.C.

About the same time as the duck episode a container of nike running shoes washed into the Pacific off the coast of Vancouver Island. Islanders being the frugal folk they are began to collect the sneakers as they washed ashore. Initially trades were made ad hoc to match up shoe sizes but the process was awkward. Off to the side of a dirt road on the way to isolated logging and fishing villages near to where the most part of the lost shipment washed up a few islanders began to leave odd shoes at the base of an ancient cedar tree. The idea caught on and the tree became a repository for the sneakers. After all possible matchings had taken place the left over shoes were nailed to the tree trunk. The sneakers cover the tree trunk the full circumference to the tree to a height of about 10 feet. It's the Shoe Tree to natives. To uninformed tourists it's an enigma wrapped in a mystery.

What the duck!

"We're getting reports of ducks being washed up on America's eastern seaboard” – Who reports this sort of thing! And where do you get the number!? I’m guessing it’s not in the Yellow Pages under “Washed-up Plastic Ducks”!

Washed up plastic ducks

Thank you. I'm now desperately trying to rid myself of the mental image of a group of plastic ducks living in a cardboard box under the railway arches, swigging meths out of a bottle in a crumpled brown paper bag.

The IT angle

The IT angle is of course than the more enterprising of these ducks have already found their way onto the motivational-pep-talks-for-computer-salesmen circuit, and are charging $5000 for a 30 minute talk with slides.

Right then

To monitor world currents we obviously need a regular dumping of Rubber Duckies around the North Pole.

Perhaps, for the sake of scientific clarity, said duckies could be color-coded ? Like yellow for 2007, blue for 2008, green for 2009 and so on. A bar code number would obviously be required as well.

Finally, a web site would have to be set up to allow people to report sightings, be it on the sea or on shore. GPS coordinates, time and date, and maybe an attached pic would do nicely. If possible, a pic of the barcode would be lovely.

So, which environmentally-friendly toy company is willing to do this important thing for science ?

Aussie Immigrant Ducks

These ducks were probably for a charity drive we used to have here in Oz. The ducks were let float down a river with the winner receiving a prize. They were LEGAL IMMIGRANTS in their natural environment of pure clean Aussie water.

If these wandering ducks with no country status do start landing in Oz again, I'm sure the RAN will put a few shots across their bills. Either that or we will send them to Nauru, not New Zealand, Dougal.

Explanation:

"many of them reportedly finishing up in Australia, where they were doubtless accorded the traditional hostile reception."

A few years back a ship full of would-be-immigrants from Asia arrived in Australia, many of them sick and starving. Australian PM John Howard was seeking re-election at the time, so played the ultra-conservative card, and decided it would be just fine if they weren't allowed in for help, since they were only foreigners. Evidently disregarding human rights is popular in Australia, as he was then re-elected by a worryingly healthy majority. Meanwhile New Zealand opted to help instead.

It's sick, jingoistic electioneering that works. Akin to Maggie Thatcher letting almost a thousand young men die fighting a pointless war over the Falklands - people died, but hey, she got re-elected

Technological possibilty

North West passage

Thanks to global warming, the path is now open, at least for some limited time every year. With the prospect that Earth's ice caps will be gone, many companies already planning shipping routes across the north pole. A modified cargo ship already made it through a few years ago.

Newer article on ducky phenom

There is a newer article which talks about the ducks, plastic beavers, and the Nike shoes being used to track ocean currents in the Feb. 4, 2006 edition of Science News. The flotsam is not the focus of the article, but it does talk about the significance of the inadvertant floating plastic research tools at some length.

Washed overboard

Those curious about things washing overboard, this link has a picture of the APL China after it limped into port following a massive storm. Those boxes are supposed to be stacked upright. This one was from 1998, so no plastic ducks were harmed during the shooting of THIS photo.